Asian Americans Archives - Julia Flynn Siler

Two Historic “Safe Houses”

January 21, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

Cameron House, at 920 Sacramento Street in San Francisco, is famous as the place where thousands of vulnerable girls and women found their freedom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It opened its doors in 1874 and is the setting for my book, The White Devil’s Daughters.

But it was not the first organization to supporting trafficking survivors in Chinatown.

That honor goes to the Methodist Mission Home, now located a few blocks away at 940 Washington Street. It opened its top floor two years earlier, in 1870, to provide a refuge to Chinese girls and women who’d been trafficked into labor or sex slavery. Like Cameron House, the institution now known as Gum Moon Residence Hall & Asian Women’s Resource Center still provides services to vulnerable women.

“Auntie” Tye and one degree of separation….

November 14, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

One of the unexpected pleasures of my book tour has been meeting readers whose own life stories overlap with the characters I write about in The White Devil’s Daughters.

After a recent talk I gave at the San Francisco Theological Seminary , a retired Chinese American woman named May Lynne Lim came up to introduce herself to me. We chatted briefly and she handed me a sealed envelope with my name inked onto it in careful handwritten script.

Tye Leung Schulze, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

Five Generations at Cameron House

September 16, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

The Rev. Harry Chuck can trace his family’s history at 920 Sacramento Street back to the late 19th century.

That’s when his grandmother was sold into slavery by her impoverished family in China. Her owners sent her to San Francisco but she was intercepted by immigration officials before she reached one of Chinatown’s many brothels. They brought her instead to the Presbyterian Mission Home on 920 Sacramento Street, which was established in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1874 as a refuge for vulnerable women.

The Rev. Harry Chuck at Cameron House, photo by author.

From Cameron House to Civil Rights Work

August 3, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 2 Comments

Donaldina Cameron’s work inspired many people. One of the most memorable is Marion Kwan, a civil rights activist who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s.

Marion Kwan, photo by author

Born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Marion calls herself a “Cameron House kid.” When Marion’s mother immigrated from China in 1940, she was detained along with Marion’s older 7-year-old sister at Angel Island. After their release, they were met on San Francisco’s docks by one of Cameron House’s Chinese staffers, possibly Mae Wong.

Chinatown Rising

July 3, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 2 Comments

This summer, I saw the new film “Chinatown Rising” in San Francisco. It’s a new documentary directed by Harry Chuck and Josh Chuck, a father and son team. Both of them have been deeply involved with Cameron House, whose early history I explore in my latest book.

The Rev. Harry Chuck, a social activist and now filmmaker, was a youth director and then Executive Director of Cameron House. He mentioned to his son Josh, who also worked at Cameron House over the years, that he was thinking about getting rid of some film reels that had been sitting in his garage for decades. Josh asked if he could see them first.

Seeking Refuge on the “Castle” Grounds

April 22, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler 4 Comments

I’ve walked or biked past our local “castle” hundreds of times: Its Romanesque Revival campus perched on a hillside above my home town has a magical quality to it, particularly at dusk. In the days when our boys were reading J.K. Rowling’s books, it seemed as if Harry Potter might swoop through it spires any moment during a Quidditch match.

The San Francisco Theological Seminary

Debunking the “White Rescue Myth”

February 18, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

The best-known image of the pioneering anti-trafficking crusader Donaldina Cameron at work was taken in the early 20^th century in a garbage-strewn alley in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Donaldina Cameron (left, standing) with interpreter and police officers staging a rescue of a Chinese girl. Courtesy of Cameron House.

Cameron, wearing a full black skirt that fell just above her ankles and a dowdy, small- brimmed hat, gazes toward the camera. A man in a suit stands partway up a ladder propped against a brick building. On a balcony above him, a man who appears to be a plainclothes police officer holds a girl in his arms. She has a long black braid hanging down her back and is the “slave girl” supposedly being rescued.

The Fight to End Modern Slavery

January 24, 2019 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

January was Human Trafficking Prevention Month, a designation of heartbreaking relevance to my home state of California. Not only does it remain one of the nation’s leading hubs for sex and labor trafficking; the state is also home to a host of non-profit organizations who fight the crimes of sex and labor slavery year-round.

Map showing locations of human trafficking cases in 2017, as tracked by anti-trafficking organization Polaris.

Remembering 1882

May 7, 2017 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

On Saturday, May 6^th, several hundred protestors gathered in San Francisco’s historic Portsmouth Square in Chinatown carrying such signs as “Remember 1882” and “2017 Has Become 1882.”

They were there to mark the 135^th anniversary of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law implemented to exclude a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the U.S. It was one of the most shamefully racist pieces of legislation ever enacted in America and was repealed in 1943.